New mixture for ac driving low pressure XE lamp

Summary form only given. Xe is good candidate for mercury free light source. Since Xe atom has very large value of collision cross-section, its positive column easily reaches a constricted state which lowers the lighting efficiency. Therefore, it is important to prevent Xe positive column from constriction for high efficient light source. To achieve diffused positive column, high voltage pulse driving system has been widely used in low pressure Xe lamp. There is a problem to use the pulse power system in the commercial aspect: the price of a high voltage pulse power inverter is too high for home use. In this work, we suggested the noble gas mixing combination, Xe-N₂, for high efficient low pressure Xe lamp. The energy transfer mechanism of Xe-N₂ mixture is as follows. An excited N₂ molecules is produced by the collision between an electron having a low energy about 2-4 eV and N₂. The energy of excited molecules is directly transferred to the neutral Xe atom and the excited Xe and metastable Xe are produced. We use optical emission spectroscopy (OES) to determine excited species in discharge and ELENDIF to calculate electron temperature and EEDF of positive column. From the calculation results, the Xe-N₂ mixture shows the 10-20% of VUV radiation enhancement comparing with pure Xe discharge in the low reduced electric field